February 29, 2016

CSM XI Candidates, Part 4

Voting is open! Time to try to sprint through the remaining candidates I suppose, though we have until March 25th to cast those votes. So don't be in a rush quite yet!

Top Notch Candidates

Am I being pickier this year, or are the candidates not as strong? Another round with no candidates solidly in this category.

Interesting Candidates

Utari Onzo (forum) (interview) (analysis show)I found him an interesting combination: a former Amarr FW player who is now in Providence (but not an official Providence candidate, which appears to be Jin'taan if anyone), who also claims wormhole experience, logi FC as his favorite role, and is a lore-focused part-time roleplayer as well. This is a stronger position for a lore expert than we saw with Uriel (see part 3). When he discussed some of the problems the RP community has had in the Intergalatic Summit forum it gave me a glimmer of why such a representative might be valuable as well. His real push is for increasing interactivity between the players and the Eve universe, which isn't strictly just about lore, but included an example of players getting excited that their in-game activities showed up in a Scope video. With more talk about increasing rat behavioral capabilities it seems this could be a good time to have someone with such an area of interest in the CSM.Nash Kadavr (forum) (interview) (analysis show)As the head organizer of #Eve_nt perhaps it's not surprising the Nash is running as a community and live event candidate. He's passionate about this but ... what exactly does that have to do with the usual CSM duties again? How does that inform being a sounding board for new sov mechanics, FW changes, or ship balancing? The frustrating thing is that Nash's experience as a leader of Kadavr Black Guards / The Bastards is a great statement on that which he didn't get to at all in his interview. Fortunately he isn't as shy about it in his forum thread, so at least people who read that might have more reason to vote for him. He might have been Top Notch in my opinion except for the way he responded to the whole mess with IWantIsk. I'm not as worried about what IWI said about him, and I buy his version of the events (which also doesn't speak well of Bobmon) but it made me wonder how he would handle strong disagreements with another CSM. "Never doing business with them again" isn't an option I want CSMs to be exercising in this particular case, though it might work well for Eve_NT. I think the Analysis Show concerns about his time availability are pretty solid here, given all that he does. It all adds up to not quite being Top Notch, though I expect he may well end up on my personal ballot.Sogor (forum) (interview) (analysis show)So he's got a lot of ideas, seems he can communicate them, and has a lot of things he is interested in, and I appreciate that he's trying to present himself as an unbiased "scientific" candidate. However, that same approach makes him very much of the "Features and Ideas" candidate who seems to want to present a lot of things for CCP to do. We can look at his ideas as an indicator of the way he thinks, though, and that's better than some of the candidates who were so bland in their avoidance of any position that they don't provide any clue of what's going on inside their head. On the other hand, it seems like he hasn't thought deeply about the CSM work side (see the "how to build rep with CSM" and "how to communicate" parts of the interview). In the end, his positive attitude bumped him up into this "Interesting" category though I think what this really means is that I hope he works harder on this and we see him again next year. ProTip: don't start your CSM interview by saying that you're running because "why not, I can say I tried it."

Don't Waste Your Time

Erika Mizumi (forum) (interview) (analysis show)One of those folks I hate to put in this category, but it's for the best. If you're unsure about her, read her forum post and don't listen to her interview. Having an industrial representative could be a good thing for the CSM, but her more interesting (if niche) element is for high usability for the disabled. As with Joffy, I think this also argues well for being high usability for all players. For instance, her argument for better visual indicators of fleet commands could help with cross-language fleets as well as the hard of hearing. But the bottom line is that the interview made me think that she could not communicate consistent and persuasively, which is a key attribute for the CSM. That may be nerves, it may have been a bad run of things, but if so I hope we'll see her again in future CSM runs.Borat Gureen (forum) (interview) (analysis show)With a focus on solo and "microcorp" he certainly catches my attention. The idea of someone focused on the assymmetrical "guerrilla warfare" in Eve is a good one to have around. This could definitely be seen as a slightly different niche than the solo or small-gang play that would be covered by Apothne, Gorksi, or Mr Hyde. However, the farther he goes in the interview the more I scratch my head. His comments about the role of the CSM in the design of the ESS makes me think he hasn't listened to the multiple DoW episodes where Ali Aras talked about the topic. His comment that he would only work for his constituency (instead of the whole of Eve) is a big knock. Then we get into his ideas about players having a right of privacy for their lossmails, but he wants CCP to provide him a list of who voted for him so he can better communicate with them, and he has some big ideas about disclosing who is the alt of whom (as if CCP even has that info, as they've commented before). So some interesting ideas, but it seems generally if you're interested in him you might find better candidates elsewhere.Bait'er De'Outlier (forum) (interview)He is a highsec wardec candidate who definitely comes across as passionate. His cry to "undo the nerfs on Eve" reads as a bit of touch, though at least he clarifies that he doesn't mean the ship-balancing nerfs ... just the anti-ganking ones? His attitude really seems to convey that he's not in the more modern Eve, but still represents the "everyone should play my way" mindset that was more common a couple years back but which you don't generally see in CSM candidates anymore. He's also another candidate who seems to feel that a it's a valid communication strategy to just have people eve-mail him if they want to communicate with him. I do have to give him a nod as a fellow Star Fleet Battles player from back in the day.Edit: Sheesh, now I see he's not even on the official candidate list. He really is "that guy" - what a waste of my time.Billbert Lashlily - apparently another person who bothered to do an interview, but not get on the official candidate list.

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